24 June 2011

Read this now.

http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2011/06/24/robs-case-for-trading-reyes/#comments

I want to buy this Rob guy a beer.  I think the exact same things, but dang if he doesn't explain them a lot better.

And in response the eternal and totally-missing-the-point question of "who do you get to replace him?" let me once again say, "You don't, nor do you have to."  It's been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jose Reyes is not the key to winning championships.

23 June 2011

A telling choice of words from MetsBlog

[NOTE:  Apparently the "scheduled publish" feature is still not working properly.  This was supposed to go up first thing in the morning yesterday.]

So sayeth Brian Erni:
Tomorrow’s matinee is a huge game for this team. A win would give the Mets the series win and a 3-3 home stand.
So this is what we're down to, huh?  "Huge" is now defined as not losing 2 out of 3 to a last place team that arrived at CitiField with a record of 33-40?

Seriously, just chew on that a while.  Swish it around, taste it.  Ponder the fact that it's really been so long since the Mets were in honest contention for anything meaningful that a pivotal moment in the season now consists of the opportunity to split a home stand with the bottom half of the American League West.

I remember huge.  Huge is a weekend series between the 1st and 2nd place teams with a half game between them.  Huge is sweeping the team nipping at your heels as if to say, "Nice try, but this is our year, not yours."  Huge is a playoff game in October.  This--while I'm sure it will be a perfectly enjoyable afternoon game coinciding on a day off for me--is a lousy, laughable substitute for huge.

18 June 2011

That was fun while it lasted.

Normally, I refrain from posting on weekends, but as you can see, it's been a while.  I got hella busy with work and managed to get sick for all but a couple of days of a two-week stretch, so the blog here fell pretty low on the priority list.  That said...

Here we are, with the Mets having played pretty well for the past couple of weeks, polishing up a 6-4 road trip and not one, but two series wins against a winning Braves' team, yet they are again: 2 games under .500, which appears to be the team's permanent home in 2011.

That's just the way it is with the Mets of this era.  They have flashes of brilliance, but things always revert back to mediocrity.  The last two days have been a microcosm.  After digging out of the hole and sitting at .500 for a day, and on the verge of sweeping the Braves, they hand it right back.  And they don't just lose--no, that'd be to boring for this era of Metsdom.  They lose on the combination of an error and a balk.   Then, the bad taste of that lingers through Friday and they drop the home opener against the Angels, who should have been at a disadvantage after flying from end of the continent to the other.

Like I assume most Mets fans are, I'm just enjoying the season for what it is one game at a time.  Even that's tough, because as long as they hang around on the fringes of contention (4 1/2 out of the wild card as I type this), the higher the likelihood the franchise continues in this purgatorial holding pattern instead of making some big moves one way or the other.  Contending is awesome.  Rebuilding is at least interesting.  This limbo situation is just "meh."

Yes, there's still plenty of season left.  Yes, it may not take 90 wins to make the playoffs.  But until this team can stay over .500 for more than 24 hours, I'm forced to believe they simply are what they are: usually pretty good at some things, usually pretty bad at others, and almost perfectly mediocre over the long haul.